Loading Open Sans Google font in Gmail

Question

I am using the Google font Open Sans in my emails and they look fine in the Apple Mail client, however they do not display in Gmail.

My understanding is that Gmail, in general, does not load web font however i've seen a few comments suggesting that Gmail will now load a small subset of webfont - one of them being the popular "Open Sans".

However, this blog post, however suggest that it is still not possible as of April 2020.

Is there a way around this or do we still have to resort to fallback fonts? e.g:

font-family: Open Sans, Arial, sans-serif;

Answer 1

No currently it is not possible. It is advised that you should keep using fallback fonts until it gets support.

Answer 2

It looks like the best you will get from Gmail is Roboto. Open Sans does not appear to work.

Roboto will work on Gmail webmail, and the Gmail app on iOS, but not the Gmail app on Android (tested Android 6, 7.1 and 8).

Gmail iOS 10.3.2, with serif (the squiggly bits) fallback:

Gmail Android 8.0, with serif fallback:

So your best font-stack would be: 'Custom Font', Roboto, WebSafeFont, generic.

i.e. font-family:'Open Sans',Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;